


Nothing Stays The Same

by heyyourgoldfishsucks



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: After HQ Explosion Era, After HQ Explosion is current time and SEP is flashbacks, Angst, Fluff, M/M, SEP, Soldier Enhancement Program Era, at some point, this can kinda be read as a one shot but will have continuation at some point in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 07:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14444601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyyourgoldfishsucks/pseuds/heyyourgoldfishsucks
Summary: The Overwatch HQ in Switzerland has turned into ashes and two men are fighting for their lives in the middle of it all, separated from one another but the same question haunting them both, making them go over the life they've had together up until this point of agony and destruction."How did we end up like this?"





	Nothing Stays The Same

**Author's Note:**

> heya my pals, my buddies! the fic is full of angst (with a some fluff and hopefully humour as well) focused on their time at the SEP and to the events after their presumed deaths so this works in the flashback kinda way, explosion aftermath is the current time and SEP is in the past. 
> 
> I currently have two fics for another fandom unfinished so this is just something I wrote in between those stories to rewire my brain, so I don’t know when I will be able to focus on this one more and update it so the plot as for the beginning is kinda loose so that you could maybe treat this as a one shot if you squint your eyes a bit. there's gonna be continuation for sure tho!
> 
> you can find me on tumblr under the same name if you wanna hmu!
> 
> (title is the name of a song by Harbours which I absolutely love and I feel like it fits r76 and its angst perfectly, it’s not on youtube but you can find it on spotify, give it a listen!)

The air stood still, heavy with smoke, coloring the world in a monotone shade of grey which devoured the before so bright colors of the building - or what used to be a building but was now nothing but a ruin, a final, devastating proof of the end that had been coming for longer than anybody had known.

Everything was broken. Everything was gone.

It was as if the whole world had stopped for a moment in the face of the destruction, trying to balance the roaring sound of the explosion that had shaken the ground just a few seconds ago with as much quietness as it could, trying to keep something, anything, from falling apart because there is only so much tearing apart a world can handle before collapsing on itself, causing somethings to turn into nothings.

This careful, quiet balancing was interrupted by a slight noise, a shift in a pile of rubble exactly on the centre of the area of the mass destruction, the smallest movement, the smallest sound, but still enough for the world to start rolling forward again.

Slowly, ever so slowly, a pair of hands, covered in blood and scars deep enough to reveal bone, the hands of a man on the verge of immediate death, crawled their way from under the pile, pushing away the pieces of something that used to be their whole life.

Gabriel knew full well that even though he couldn’t feel any pain as he slowly moved aside the rubble that had landed on him, he was barely clinging on to life at the moment and without the SEP and the hell he’d gone through because of it, he’d surely already be dead. Not that he felt exactly grateful for that right now as the smoke filled his lungs with every shallow breath he managed to take, his ears were still ringing, the sound of the explosion playing in his head over and over again, banging against his skull louder and louder and making keeping himself conscious a harder task by the second. He also knew that if he’d manage to shift his neck enough to see what his body looked like, there wouldn’t be much to see. He probably had more organs outside of his body than inside of it by now and he could feel the blood his heart was still bravely trying to pump into his dying body flowing out of him, forming a pool of color around him in the middle of the grayness.

Gabriel knew that he was dying, he knew what had happened, he knew everything was really about to turn into nothing, that everything he had worked for for years, everything he had accomplished and everything he had screwed up, everything he had done and left undone, none of that mattered anymore because this was  _ it _ , this was finally it, and he knew,  _ he knew _ , but at this moment he couldn’t care less because-

 

_ Jack. _

 

_ Jack. _

 

_ JACK. _

 

Gabriel could feel himself shouting the name out loud but no sound came through, instead the tears did, burning hot on his face because everything was cold, everything was so cold and everything was so dark and everything was too much and holding on seemed pointless because he couldn’t save him, he had been there and now he was gone and what’s the point in holding on when there’s nothing left to come back to, nothing left to fight for and this was his fault this was his fault this was his fault this was his fault and as he drew his last breath before letting go he heard a voice in his head over and over again, even louder than the never-ending echo of the explosion, repeating, asking, begging, crying

 

_ How did we end up like this? _

 

 

\---

 

 

“Morrison”, the man smiled and offered his hand to Gabriel over the lunch table as he sat down. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

Gabriel just stared at the blonde who stared back, seemingly unaffected by the frown he was greeted with and after a few seconds Gabriel grunted in response, not taking the hand he was being offered and turned his attention back to the food - if one dared to call the  _ stuff _ on his tray food.

_ I was expecting super soldiers to at least get decent fucking meals. _

He was not in the mood for small talk. The stuff they had pumped in him in the early hours of the morning - and now that he thought of it, the stuff had probably been the same he was eating right now because it tasted about as shitty as he had been feeling the whole day - had made every single muscle in his body burn like he was sitting in a goddamn bonfire, and the sensation didn’t make him especially happy. Neither did the fact that the week he had spent in the “new, groundbreaking program to ensure the nation’s and the citizen’s safety”, had shown him nothing but failures, “drop-outs” he was pretty sure were people who were more dead than anything else, and promises after promises not being kept.

It was not that Gabriel Reyes was a jerk, or a person who hated other people. No, he was a smart man who just knew that the chances were that everyone he met here would rather sooner than later end up in a mass grave on the nearby desert with their families informed of their “heroic death during a classified mission” when in reality they were just test rabbits in a test gone southways, and among a hundred test rabbits a lucky few survive. He also knew that people grew on him way too quickly if he let them close to him. Easier to keep them at bay.

Especially the ones with big blue eyes and a smile that would’ve knocked him off his feet unless he was already sitting down.

The smile that miraculously hadn’t faded anywhere, Gabriel noticed as he glanced up again, the blue eyes meeting his. “Well, you must be Reyes. ‘Star of the program’ like our dear torturers like to call you.”

Gabriel grunted again but couldn’t help the corners of his lips from curling up ever so slightly and he quickly looked down on his plate in an effort to hide it, piercing some of the stuff on it with his fork, making a sound that suggested that he should probably not put any more of whatever it was into his mouth.

“Want some of mine?”

Gabriel looked up again and this time the smile on the man’s face seemed to have reached his eyes as they twinkled even in the shitty industrial lightning of the cafeteria, head tilted a bit to the side, the few escaped blonde hairs that Morrison swiped back up revealing a raised eyebrow, and the motion revealing the muscles on his arm as the shirt tightened around it.

_ Damn. _

“Why would I-”, Gabriel started before actually looking down on Morrison’s tray for the first time and noticing that instead of  _ the stuff _ , Morrison’s plate was filled with baked potatoes and a steak, making him quickly lift his eyes back up to Morrison’s which were now twinkling even more. “How the hell?”

“Friends in high places”, Morrison winked and pierced through a potato with his fork. “And by high places I mean back at the kitchen, it pays to be friendly every once in awhile you know. Especially to those beneath you.”

Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Morrison stuff his mouth full of the  _ fucking delicious looking and smelling food that was actually food, not stuff. _

“I am not ‘above’ anyone nor am I unfriendly.”

Morrison started laughing, or so Gabriel assumed anyways since he didn’t actually hear a laugh, but a series of coughs, the kind of someone makes when they’re choking in their food. After a minute or so Morrison managed to be able to breathe somehow properly again, and he looked up at Gabriel while pushing his tray to the side.

“You are a dangerous man to dine with, Reyes”, Morrison flashed a smile, brushing his fingers through his hair. “Everyone knows that you’re the "Super Soldier" with capital letters here and I’m sorry but so far you haven’t given out the kindest of expressions about yourself. Shaking my hand would’ve granted you at least 50 kindness points for example.”

Gabriel had opened his mouth ready to protest, but the one thing standing in the way of him keeping yet another person at bay was that stupid, gorgeous smile on Morrison’s stupid, gorgeous face. He looked down at his plate, then back at the tray Morrison had pushed aside and made a decision.

_ This is going to bite me in the ass someday, but fucking hell at least I’m not going to starve to death now. _

“How many points am I at now?”, Gabriel finally returned the smile while uncrossing his arms, pushing himself forward closer to the table.

“Like -348 I’d say”, Morrison chuckled. “You were at -400 but you got 52 back for smiling.”

“That’s all it takes?”

“Well no, it was just the first time you smiled back at me so you got extra points, you have to do something better next time”, Morrison winked and pushed his tray towards Gabriel. “And you have some catching up to do because I am getting at least a hundred points for this one.”

Gabriel stared at the food Morrison offered him in disbelief while the blonde got up from the table, smiling widely. “See you around, Reyes.”

“Later, Morrison”, Gabriel mumbled after him which made Morrison turn around and give him a thumbs up and he could hear  _ ten points to slytherin _ before the man disappeared through the cafeteria door, leaving Gabriel smiling at his new tray of actual food.

After he’d devoured the food approximately two minutes later, he noticed something silvery partly under the tray, and moved it to reveal the dogtags Morrison had taken off his neck while trying to breathe normally again after his near to death experience. Gabriel took them in his hands and turned them around, revealing the engraving on the other side, which made him smile a bit wider and feel a little less shittier than before as he pushed the tags into his back pocket and got up from the table.

 

_ Jack Morrison #76 _

 

_ Jack. _


End file.
